It was only September, so the weather in Wyoming was still nice. This is noteworthy because, in my younger years, I camped in Wyoming in December. Oh my. As I recall, the overnight temperature was somewhere in the region of -5 degrees. Yes, it was below zero. We went to bed sometime around the 4:30 PM mark because we were too cold to stay out of our sleeping bags. I had a cat traveling with me at the time, and the cat spent the night in my sleeping bag near my feet. Sometime shortly after midnight, my son, who was around 11 at the time, got up to use the bathroom and thought he saw the light of dawn. It was a bright moon, but we didn’t know that until we’d already gotten out of bed. So we broke camp and spent the rest of the night in a diner somewhere.

In September, though, Wyoming is a great place to camp, so I checked out Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area. Don’t get me wrong…I loved Flaming Gorge. I just wasn’t completely certain why they named it “Flaming Gorge”. Were there flames? Yes. But they weren’t as prevalent as I expected based on what I’ve seen in other parts of the desert, as you can see in the first photo. Is it gorgeous? I think so. Is it flaming? Mmmm….sort of…..here and there. Maybe they should call it “Flickering Gorge”. Or “Glowing Match-end Gorge”. However flaming it may or may not be, I pulled into a great campsite right on the lake and eagerly walked down to the shore….only to sink into the soft bank up to my mid-thigh. So I couldn’t do much lake-walking even though the lake was temptingly close.

A group of prong-horn antelope wandered through my campsite one day, and that was exciting. I’ve had trouble photographing prong-horn antelope over the years. They’re quick, they don’t like to pose, and they don’t like photographers (or maybe it’s just me they don’t like). In this case though, I was able to snap a quick pic before they got disgusted and bounded off.

Flaming Gorge 9/22

Colorado Rockies 9/22

Beautiful Wyoming